Blaze

32. The Long Way

"I'm sorry," I say, "but I need to go back."

Austin jumps onto my arm and squeezes. His fingers are tiny, sharp claws. "What are you thinking? Have you forgotten what we saw? The Captain, he's not even human! He's one of them." 

"Them," I repeat. I taste the word and it's expired.

Them.

What did the voice say?

I am you.

Jackie is an ice sculpture beside me. Her hand stays clipped to her side. The heat has started to melt her right in the sockets of her eyes.

I don't ask her how or why or since when she's here. It doesn't matter. So little truly matters.

"That's not what I meant," I say. "I don't want to go back there. I want to go back inside. Earlier, when my eyes went black, I was talking to someone. I need to go back." A particularly sharp voice pierces through my tentative thought-shield and I wince, bleeding from an invisible wound.

"Why?"

"I just told you—"

"Why does that conversation matter? Does it matter more than your life?"

Yes. "It might lead to Dad."

Austin quiets. His eyes are wide. Wide and wet. Like he's seeing me for the first time, and I'm so cold I've created condensation on his irises.

Jackie moves and pries his arm off of me in a rough motion.

"He's lost his mind, Auz," she says. "Don't listen to him."

This is the clearest my mind has been in ages. The veil of cold is gone. It slid off like a sheet of ice. And the heat is distant and far-away. The lukewarm in-between of rationality. (It's come to me when I expect it the least.)

"I haven't lost my mind."

Jackie's eyes narrow. It's like a second face slips on top of her own, a hard mouthless mask with shields for her irises.

"You're not doing this to us. Not again. Do you have any idea—?"

"Yes," I say, and the guilt throbs dully but can't gain the temperature to scald me yet. "I know." (I took three.) "So many things... So many things happened. Which is why I have to find him. And you know I still can't go back." The white-eyed Bandits issued an edict, after all.

"We didn't think things through last time," she says quickly. "You just up and left. If you stay, and if we all think of something together, maybe..."

"I would have left eventually, anyway. She wanted me gone."

"You're talking about Mom," Austin says, and I can sense his panic.

"Yes. Mother wanted me gone. You know why. I have his eyes."

"She would never—?"

"She would never have had to say anything. Besides, there's no other way to find Dad. Don't you want him back?"

Austin swallows. "Not as much as I want you." He hangs his head, looking tortured. I know he wishes he could hide behind his hair. "I do want him back. But I want you with me, too."

"You want to have your cake and eat it too," Jackie murmurs, face still hard. Austin isn't looking at her. It's like he's afraid he'll shatter his eyes on her face—and one might. Then her eyes loosen the slightest bit and her voice runs panicky between them. "There is a way for you to come back. You make a trade. Info on the Raiders for your immunity."

"Ismael did say the Bandits protected us from the Raiders," I say. I'm only pretending to consider it.

"So that's your way in. You must know something indispensable. Something invaluable to their fight."

"You know what the Captain is," Austin says. His face is still hung, but not quite hidden. "That might be enough, if you play it right."

Yes. The Captain is one of them...

"There is no them, Auz," I say. "Whatever the Captain is, whatever he has inside him, I also have it in me. When I ate their food, something awakened in me. Someone. I need to go back and finish our conversation."

"No, you don't," Austin says.

"Auz—"

He stares at me suddenly and he's angry. "Either we all go, or no one goes. Because you seem so certain that Mom wanted you gone, but you didn't see her after you went away. You don't understand... God, Cam. I love you, too. We all do."

"It won't be easy."

"I don't want it to be easy. I want Mom to be the one on the porch, eyes on the horizon hunting for dust. And I want her to feel what we all felt when she came rolling down the driveway in our van. I want us all to come back and I want Dad to be with us. And I don't want to lose you to the Raiders again. I think everyone deserves a true miracle in their lives, and we can be hers."

"No." I make my voice sound final. "You were never meant to come after me. And I told you, if you came, that Dad would be dead. The only way to find him is if I go, and I won't go with you."

Austin sticks out his chin, links eyes with Jackie then with me. "I'm absolutely willing to live without him, if that means keeping you."

The easy innocence, the confident blue hope blazing in his eyes throws me off balance. I fumble for something to reply, some way to discredit it. All I manage is a fish-like pantomime of words; upper lip glides over, trips over bottom lip, regains footing only to lose it again.

It frightens me for him to admit he cares in such a fragile way. Like he's challenging the world to prove him wrong. Doesn't he know the world is always, always up for a challenge?

(And it is so much bigger than him.)

He's speaking as if the world is ending and he wishes he'd told me all this sooner.

(And the world is much too big for him.)

Austin stands up straighter. His anger burns like a sun. Jackie fades behind him. There's only him, looming bigger and bigger in my sight, till he's taller than me, taller than everything, taller than the four moons if they were stacked one over the other and taller than—

"Don't say you have no choice. Because you do have a choice. Just like I have a choice. I'm choosing to go with you. You have to accept that. You have to stop thinking of sneaking off, or threatening me. Just... accept things as they are."

He's swelling like a balloon. And then I'm falling, slipping under him, and Jackie's catching me with hardened terror on her face. Because there's blood coming from my mouth and it's coating her hands.

No. That's Austin. I'm watching Austin slip away, and Jackie's setting him on the ground just like she set down Tim, and a black-eyed version of me—

(The image is so clear, what's going on? Am I pulling it from her head? How?)

He's not dead. He's not dead.

My mouth pantomimes words. Lips trip and glide.

"We're not far," Jackie says, "not far from the nearest town. We just need to make it there..."

We just need to make it there.